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Government Shutdown: A Teacher's Guide | PBS NewsHour

On January 12, 2018 at midnight, the U.S. government officially shutdown after Congress and the Trump Administration failed to reach a deal that would keep it open. As the shutdown enters its third day, hundreds of thousands of government workers have been furloughed, or put on involuntary temporary leave. In 2013 when the government last shutdown, approximately 800,000 of the 2.1 million civilian federal employees were furloughed. DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), the program that protects undocumented young people who were brought to the U.S. as children, remains at the heart of the debate.

1.) What is CHIP? Another key measure up for debate in the spending bill is CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program), a government program which provides health care for 1.7 million children in the U.S.

“A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in November found that a whopping 62 percent of people believe that reauthorizing CHIP funding should be the top legislative priority for President Donald Trump and Congress in the coming months, beating out stabilizing Obamacare, tax reform or creating new immigration policies,” according to NBC News. Read more about CHIP here and discuss the following question with your students: How did CHIP, heralded for years as an example of bipartisanship at its best, turn into a political football?

2.) You may want to check out these NewsHour videos on the government shutdown:

3.) How do we know that our government is fulfilling its duties to us, the public? How do we decide what those duties are? As efforts to end the government shutdown take place, students will have the power to re-prioritize how money is spent using the interactive tool Balancing Act. What changes will they make?